Vista

The past few days have been crazy to say the least. My laptop finally kicked the bucket. It works but is very slow and after about 10 minutes starts to 'clunk'. It is 8 years old. It has been used very well. I have been looking for a new computer for about a month. I wanted to stay with XP but it seems that it is only available for business (special build) and is VERY expensive. Unless of course you are able to build it yourself...I can't. So it took about a month to convince me that my only choice was either Mac or Vista and I have too many programs that won't ever run on Mac. So it was Vista. That choice being made, I needed to decide what kind of processor. I knew I wanted something that could multi-task and was very fast. Ok, Quad Core was the only choice. Now researching whick Quad Core - Intel or AMD. It didn't take me long to figure out the Intel was the answer. After reading a lot of the chat rooms, even AMD people where disappointed with the AMD processor. It used to much electricity (my hair dryer on low for the whole day!) and it was very loud! The rest was much easier...Vista only reads up to 3GB of memory so there was no sense paying for any more. I already had the 500 GB external HD so anything with 500 or higher was more than enough.

I looked at Circuit City, Best Buy, Sam's Club, on-line...Well being as I am an instant gratification girl and the price difference was zero...I ended up at Best Buy. I purchased an HP Intel Core Quad Core, 3GB Memory, 720 GB Hard Drive computer. I also got a 24" LCD Flat Panel, High Definition, Widescreen monitor! It rotates from widescreen being side to side to widescreen being up and down so that I can turn it for the photos that I take sideways. WhooHoo!!!

I also ordered my wide format Epson printer!!! I am so excited. It should be here on Tuesday!

I paid for Best Buy's Geek Squad to 'optimize' the computer, basically to take off all the trials, the anti-virus software, the infommercials...all the crap that shouldn't be on there in the first place.

Got home - still Thursday night...put everything together. Monitor doesn't work. By this time it is close to 10:00 pm. Called HP...someone was actually in customer support and they walked me through everything. By this time I am exhausted so off to bed. I have Friday off from work so I can finish setting the computer up AND get my layouts done for TTS.

Friday morning... computer won't let me on to GMAIL, won't let me post to TTS and when I tried to install my anti-virus, I was informed that there was already an anti-virus program on the computer. I looked for Norton's in the uninstall portion of the computer and sure enough, there it was! I hit uninstall and was informed that I needed to reinstall Norton's before I could uninstall! I called the Geek Squad and was told to bring the computer in and they would uninstall Norton's correctly AND refund my 'optimization' charge. I didn't have time for this couldn't they just walk me through it. Nope. I also talked to them about GMAIL. They said it was something to do with the computer registry and that I could really mess things up if I tried to fix it. UGH!!!!

Off to Best Buy, they couldn't get Norton's to uninstall either. Finally after 2 hours they got it to uninstall. During this time, they have power cycled the computer so many times that I noticed that my old laptop booted up faster than this new computer. I asked them if it should be that slow. The 'big' Geek Squad guy is rolling his eyes at me by this time but humors me by timing the boot up process. 2 minutes go by and he finally tells one of his guys to just go get me a new $%^& computer. Okay...now another hour to optimize AGAIN!! I finally got back home 5 hours later.

Now I have come to learn a few things about Vista...it's not as bad as everyone says, if you want to install something and it won't let you, shut off the firewall, I love that I can listen to FM radio, I love that I can watch DVD,s, listen to CD,s and set it up to watch satellite TV, all with my new surround sound. I can record up to two weeks of any tv program I want and burn it to DVD. I can set up a user for Tyler and he can only go onto the internet sites that I put under his user!

I can see the screen from across the room and with the wireless keyboard and mouse I can scrap and surf at the same time. I also have a remote for the TV, internet, music...so I can mute instantly.

So, all in all even though it was orignally a pain in the butt. I am happy with my purchase. (I do still have the XP system up and running right now but eventually I will convert everything to this system.

So now I had better get my butt moving on those layouts for TTS. By the way, if you haven't read their newletter...go take a look at it. It has some great layouts.

http://digistore.treasurestoscrap.com/newsletter/feb2008.pdf

They also have a new blog. Check out the challenges and ideas there too!

http://treasurestoscrap.blogspot.com/

I am working with some of the awesome supplies from ScrapWorks today and will hopefully have a layout to share with you later today or tomorrow.

Blessings,

Angela